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Wild and Free (the summer version of me)

In a couple of days my kids will be done with school for the year, and I can’t help but look forward to the days ahead. Don’t get me wrong, I love having time to myself during the school year (as I write this from an uber hipster coffee shop downtown!), but I also love having less of a schedule. Other than the end of baseball and softball season, I purposefully don’t schedule anyhting for them all summer long. I think most of the year is full of school and activities and racing from here to there, so I LOVE taking the summer months to just be.

We go to the beach, a lot. Three days a week we get up at our normal time (about 7:15), and have breakfast like we usually do, with Mumford and Sons Pandora station playing in the background. YET, we don’t hurry. There’s no rushing to be anywhere, and I love that. They have summer workbooks they do, some chores they do, we go to the gym and they hang, but it is just CHILL. The other days they can get up at 7 and watch tv downstairs, and I sleep in (or drink coffee quietly upstairs;) We stay in pajamas as long as we can, or hop right into bathing suits. The doors are always open and the scent of freshly mowed grass wafts in.

What I love about the summer version of myself is that it is free. The kids are at an amazing age where hanging out with them is pretty fun. They make me laugh (and drive me crazy!), and spending 8 hours wth them at the lake is an easy thing to do. The days are long and filled with a sand filled car and kids with dirty feet, and taking a “sprinkler shower” at the end of the day, and an ice cold Summer Shandy on the back deck. My companions and I do what makes us happy, and the weight of the school year sheds off us like a second skin and we become Summer people. Happy. Free. And a lot happy.

Tell me, what do you do over the Summer? Is it different than the rest of the year for you?